Several federal agencies have shuttered their doors Friday, opting to take departmentwide furlough days to reach the cuts required by sequestration.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Housing and Urban Development Department, Internal Revenue Service and the Office of Management and Budget have forced all their employees to simultaneously take unpaid leave. Overall, about 115,000 federal employees -- or more than 5 percent of the workforce -- are not working Friday.

While the agencies remain closed, some employees still had to report to work.

“People that are required to keep the building running” will be in Friday, said Jerry Brown, a HUD spokesman. He added there are always people on call in case of emergency.

A call to EPA’s headquarters was answered, but an operator said the agency “is closed due to sequestration,” though some off-site contractors -- such as the operator -- are still working. OMB set up a voicemail to warn callers of its closure.

“Due to current budget constraints resulting in a furlough, we are not in the office on Friday, May 24 and not available to take your call,” the message said.

A note on IRS’ website warns taxpayers looking for refund information that online services will be unavailable through Tuesday, May 28, due to “several factors, including scheduled maintenance.”

Friday is the first of five planned furlough days at IRS.

“Due to the current budget situation, including the sequester, all IRS operations will be closed on those days,” the IRS said in a statement. “This means that all IRS offices, including all toll-free hotlines, the Taxpayer Advocate Service and the agency’s nearly 400 taxpayer assistance centers nationwide, will be closed on those days. IRS employees will be furloughed without pay. No tax returns will be processed and no compliance-related activities will take place.”

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union -- which represents IRS employees -- said the furloughs will have a deep impact on IRS workers.

“Losing 10 percent of your pay in a single pay period is no small matter,” Kelley said in a statement, “especially when you face the same rising prices for necessities that are affecting your friends, neighbors and community.”

With Memorial Day falling on Monday, May 27, the unpaid day off offers workers a four-day weekend. Kelley said this is of little consolation, however.

“NTEU would have preferred that employees have the flexibility to choose their furlough days to account for personal needs, such as day care arrangements or financial considerations,” Kelley told Government Executive. “However, the IRS made the decision to close before Memorial Day for operational considerations.”

For EPA employees, this is first of four departmentwide furlough days, but workers must take 13 in total. At HUD, all seven furlough days will close the entire agency. OMB will force 480 employees to take 10 unpaid days off.

By using this service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or
otherwise objectionable. Although GovExec.com does not monitor comments posted to this site (and
has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems
to be in violation of this rule.

Database-level encryption had its origins in the 1990s and early 2000s in response to very basic risks which largely revolved around the theft of servers, backup tapes and other physical-layer assets. As noted in Verizon’s 2014, Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR)1, threats today are far more advanced and dangerous.

In order to better understand the current state of external and internal-facing agency workplace applications, Government Business Council (GBC) and Riverbed undertook an in-depth research study of federal employees. Overall, survey findings indicate that federal IT applications still face a gamut of challenges with regard to quality, reliability, and performance management.

PIV- I And Multifactor Authentication: The Best Defense for Federal Government Contractors

This white paper explores NIST SP 800-171 and why compliance is critical to federal government contractors, especially those that work with the Department of Defense, as well as how leveraging PIV-I credentialing with multifactor authentication can be used as a defense against cyberattacks

This research study aims to understand how state and local leaders regard their agency’s innovation efforts and what they are doing to overcome the challenges they face in successfully implementing these efforts.

The U.S. healthcare industry is rapidly moving away from traditional fee-for-service models and towards value-based purchasing that reimburses physicians for quality of care in place of frequency of care.